Day 40 (4/30/11)

Today we woke up and got breakfast (cereal, toast, bananas and awesome muffins!) before heading out to Casa Mila. Our goal was to get there nice and early so we could beat the rush, and since it was the lesser of the two main houses as far as price goes, we picked it over Batllo. Our plan worked quite well, and we were inside in a matter of minutes! The entry space leads to a pretty fantastic courtyard that is very free form, which was a nice departure from the consistently square spaces of Rome. After we looked around we took the stairs up to the roof. The eight floors of climbing would have been miserable if it wasn’t for the fact that every single set of stairs was slightly different! The roof is an awesome park-type space of Gaudi sculptures and amazing views. The area is a series of terraces that step up and down around the two main courtyards. After circling the space we went back down to the attic, which houses another pretty great exhibit on Gaudi. Aside from the awesome facts about his work, the best part of this space was the rib vaulting that supported the area designed using catenary curves and modeled after the ribs of a python! After we finished here we continued down to a model apartment left intact from the time of its inhabitance. This was pretty neat, although Gaudi had much less impact here, so the space was only nice and not very architectural. After that we continued down into the second courtyard, and after a brief look through a great art exhibit focusing on food (the best part was a video where they shot a giant pomegranate with a sniper rifle in slow motion!), we left.
From here we hopped back on the Metro to the Forum for our second exploration. This was a great choice since the space was pretty amazing during the day. The underside is a magical land of mirrors and awesome spaces underneath giant holes punched through the cheesecake. The museum was free as well so we wandered around a pretty great exhibit about the earth, its history, and all of the wonderful things here (my favorite was this room that ended up like a kaleidoscope when a video was played on the floor). After we finished there we walked back outside towards the waterfront. There was a pretty fantastic urban park space here, filled with various sports space like a half pipe as well as workout/stretching equipment for the bikers and runners! The view out to the Sea was unbelievable, and the water here is so blue! The buildings that line the edge of the city before this park were all pretty neat, so the space in general was perfect! We even saw the daytime remains of the festival, and it stretched way farther than we thought! We walked here for a while before coming to an awesome pedestrian bridge that came from three spots to a point high above a highway, and then back to the Metro station.
Our next stop for the day was the Olympic Village. We walked around the city side, which had some nice fountains and some cool views down the long boulevards before heading to the waterfront area. There we saw Frank Gehry’s Fish, which was slightly disappointing since it was only a shell that you could stand under, and it wasn’t even subtle about being a fish. There were a lot of pretty cool buildings here as well, though we are not sure how many of them are new. We then walked along the beach here, which looked amazing! We wandered down for a while and saw the World Trade Center, an awesome Hotel shaped like a sail out on the water, as well as some great landscape work! Finally we turned in towards the city where we walked along a pretty big pier before catching the Metro out to the National Museum of Art.
The Metro stop let us of in a massive circle that had a huge and intricate fountain set in the middle of it. The space around the circle was pretty amazing, with buildings of every style and many ages slowing around it in a blur of color and varying detail. We walked along the periphery of this space for a while before heading down the main boulevard that led to the museum. The beginning of the street was marked by two large Big-Ben-esque towers, which were followed by some pretty great buildings lining either side. The whole area looks like a bigger version of St. Peter’s Square combined with a much bigger version of the Spanish Steps with the Vatican sitting on top of them; a very impressive space! The street itself was probably a quarter-mile long, and at the end of it was the Magic Fountain. Sadly, it only turns on at night so we could only look at its massiveness without water. Before continuing past it, however, we came upon the Barcelona Pavilion!
Another architects-only fascination, this small space designed by Mies van der Rohe was like a dream come true! There was hardly anybody there, and although the approach was through a construction site, everything about it was just how we learned. Designed for the 1929 Barcelona Exposition as the German Pavilion, it is one of the most important works in Modern Architecture. Some awesome parts outside of the architectural junk are the awesome reflection seen in the pool of water and the extensive use of glass, the materiality of the marble walls and the hearth inside, and the statue that sits in a very intimate space in back. We explored the small space for a while, relaxed and reveled in the space, and left to climb the stairs up to the museum.
The stairs were pretty ridiculous! There were well over a hundred spread over a series of terraces containing fountains and pillars (sorta random and kinda messed up the great views). The view out from the top (after we caught our breath) was exhilarating, and looking back down the axis of the main road and into the city was fantastic! We wandered around up top before heading back to the Olympic Park beyond (the museum was a little expensive and we wanted to cram as much as possible into the rest of the day, so we skipped). Our first stop in the Park was the Olympic Stadium, which was awesome! Although it was much smaller than Ohio Stadium, the space was pretty amazing. We walked around the entry terrace, got some quick lunch (at 5 pm…) and went out to the grand entry space in front. The space was an epically giant series of terraces that had some giant fountains, huge tubes (not sure what they are for, and they were yellow which was yucky), and an awesome stadium designed by Isozaki. The entire thing had to be a half-mile long from end to end, and the entire walk was pretty great. We also saw an architectural sculpture work done by Calatrava, which was pretty neat! After finishing the length of the procession we trekked back up before heading back towards the gardens.
We wandered semi-aimlessly around the back portion of the park, stopping at one park for a few minutes before it closed before heading to another that was filled with water-plants and really loud frogs! At this point we split up and Laura and I continued our journey up the hill towards the fortress. We took stair, climbed up a portion of a hill, and even walked along the side of the road before finally coming to a real approach. There we found a pretty awesome slide that I went down (much to Laura’s chagrin) before continuing up. The summit was pretty great and there was a small path in the woods that gave a great view of a massive cruise ship docked below. We continued up into the fort, and even though the inside was closed, we were still able to walk around the periphery. This was the highest point we have been on during the trip, and the views everywhere were unbelievable! We walked around and looked at the old artillery guns, which you could climb on before sitting and watching the massive shipping yard below for a while.
When it was finally time to go we began the long journey all the way back to the fountain where we were meeting the others to see it turn on. We ended up getting there early so we just relaxed on the stairs in front of the museum for a while and listened to the guitarist that was there play (he was pretty great!). We eventually went down to find the others, but they hadn’t come back from dinner yet, so we climbed the whole way back up to watch the fountain turn on. Sadly, it never did, and as we walked back down we found a sign that let us know that it would be done at nine, two hours earlier. We ended up finding our counterparts on the way out, and we all took the metro back home where we collapsed after another amazing day!